Your God is Too Somber

Your God is Too Somber

Christopher Dreisbach

Your God Is Too Somber

Copyright © 2019 Christopher Dreisbach. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part I: A Call to Joy

Chapter 1: Call to Joy

Chapter 2: Humor as a Means to Truth

Chapter 3: Humor About vs. Humor Within

Part II: A Theology of Laughter

Chapter 4: A Little Logic

Chapter 5: Arguments for Humor in Christianity

Chapter 6: Arguments against Humor in Christianity

Part III: The Bible as Comedy

Chapter 7: Humor in the Bible

Chapter 8: Humor in the Old Testament

Chapter 9: Jonah as Comedy

Chapter 10: Humor in the New Testament

Chapter 11: Humor in the Parable of the Talents

Chapter 12: Conclusion

Bibliography

For my dad, the Reverend Frank Dreisbach, whose God is not too somber.

It is God’s will that we seek Him willfully and busily, gladly and merrily without unskillful heaviness and vain sorrow

—Julian of Norwich

Preface

When J. B. Phillips published Your God Is Too Small in 1961, he found troubling many Christians’ failure to find a God big enough for modern needs, and their worshipping instead A childish conception of God which could not stand up to the winds of real life for five minutes. ¹ Phillips hoped that his book would expose the inadequate conceptions of God which still linger unconsciously in many minds, and which prevent our catching a true glimpse of God; and that his book would suggest ways in which we find the real God for ourselves.²

Phillips starts the book with a list of 17 false conceptions about God, each of which describes a god inadequate to meet contemporary needs and each of which falls short of the New Testament’s description of God. Most of these misconceptions ascribe false attributes to God, for example, meek and mild; God in a Box, limiting God’s attributes to those distinctive of a particular denomination; and Perennial Grievance, a disappointing God who is fallen down on the job.³ Several other misconceptions describe or entail a false and inadequate relationship between God and humanity, for example, Absolute Perfection, which abhors the imperfection of humans; the Heavenly Bosom, which limits God to a place for humans to escape; and the Managing Director who has no time for puny humans, as He keeps the universe on track.⁴ Still other misconceptions of God deny true attributes of God, such as the Grand Old Man, which describes an old fashioned God that is neither living nor contemporary.⁵

Phillips then describes an adequate God who focuses Himself through the person of Christ and offers a relationship with humans that forgives their sins, offers answers to the most pressing spiritual questions, and negates death.

In describing an adequate God, Phillips declares that

It is not our intention to build up merely a bigger and better god, who may be just as much an artificiality as any of the unattractive galaxy we have discarded. What we are going to try to do is to open the windows of the mind and spirit—to put it crudely, to enlarge the aperture through which the light of the true God may shine.⁶

Whether Phillips’ description of an adequate God is accurate—and adequate—he succeeds in challenging Christians to rethink their frequently incorrect or insufficient conceptions of the God they claim to worship. Whether those Christians accept the challenge is beyond Phillips’ control.

Three years after Phillips published Your God is too Small, Elton Trueblood published The Humor of Christ, whose cover describes the book as A bold challenge to the traditional stereotype of a somber, gloomy Christ.⁷ Whether by design or by coincidence, Trueblood’s target is one of Phillips’ unreal Gods: the Pale Galilean, whom worshippers treat as a negative force in their lives.⁸ This God is a scolding, scowling God—the God of the stereotypical Puritan—whose presence is a constant reminder of human depravity and spiritual illness. Looking for some compensation in worshipping such a God, Phillips posits three imagined advantages:

• The belief that the joy and freedom of those who do NOT subscribe to the worship of the negative god is just an illusion.

• A certain spiritually masochistic joy in being crushed by the juggernaut of a negative god.

• The comforting idea of being something special. ⁹

Phillips notes the lines of a traditional hymn that captures this view: Oh to be nothing, nothing, Only to lie at His feet, A broken and emptied vessel For the Master’s use made meet. ¹⁰ Phillips claims that what is missing from this inadequate, if not false, image of God is a sense of humor:

The sense of humor is, of course, suspended by the negative god, or his devotees would be bound to see the absurdity of anyone’s ambition being to be nothing, a broken and, not unnaturally, emptied vessel lying at God’s feet! Better still, the New Testament (a book full of freedom and joy, courage and vitality) might be searched in vain to supply any endorsement whatsoever of the above truly dreadful verse and the conception of God it typifies. If ever a book taught men to be something, something, to stand and do battle, to be far more full of joy and daring and life than they ever were without god—that book is the New Testament!¹¹

The question, then, for devotees of this God is dare they defy and break away from this imaginary god with the perpetual frown and find the One who is the great Positive, who gives life, courage and joy. . .?¹²

Trueblood offers the same dare and sets the stage for a rich body of scholarship to follow. How, these scholars wonder, can Christians answer the call to joy without having a sense of humor? Ought there to be a theology of joy as an answer to the medieval theology of tears? How much do Christians miss if they fail to see the humor in scripture? How much deeper and more fulfilling is Christian worship when it makes room for humor? How much more can Christians teach if they include humor in their teaching? Christians who worship the Pale Galilean are worshipping a God who is too somber.

This book takes its cue from Phillips’ warning not to confine God to our false or inadequate images, and follows Trueblood’s lead in focusing on one mistake—denying God and God’s worshippers a sense of humor. Through a survey of several scholars’ views on the matter, this book builds its argument on three propositions: answering the call to joy is impossible in the absence of humor; a theology of joy is plausible and stands up well logically against a theology of tears; and it makes more sense to regard the Bible as comedy than as tragedy.

1. Phillips, Your God is Too Small,

8

.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.,

26

,

37

,

48

.

4. Ibid.,

30

,

33

,

40

.

5. Ibid.,

23

.

6. Ibid.,

59

.

7. Trueblood, The Humor of Christ. While Trueblood’s book begins a trend of scholarship of this sort, it was not the first to engage this topic. See, for example, Lanyon, The Laughter of God (

1941

); Morison, The Humour of Christ (

1931

); Webster, Laughter in the Bible (1960); Wordsworth. The Laughter of God (

1925

): Zuver, Salvation by Laughter (

1933

).

8. Phillips, Your God is Too Small,

50

.

9. Ibid.,

51–52

.

10. Ibid.,

52

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.,

53

.

Acknowledgements

This book emerges from a master’s-level course I have taught and most recently co-taught at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute of Theology. My thanks, therefore, go to former Dean, Dr. Michael Gorman, for giving me the chance to design and teach the course in its first form; and present Dean, The Rev. Dr. Brent Laytham, for trusting me to put the course on-line, and then to develop a new version of the course based on a rough draft of this book. Thanks to Dr. Rebecca Hancock, biblical scholar, who co-taught the most recent version of this course and who taught me a great deal in the bargain. And thanks to all of the students who have taken the course, for suggesting improvements to course content, and for encouraging this study. Because the most recent student cohort worked with a draft of this book and made many terrific suggestions for improvement, these folks deserve recognition by name: Madison Bolesta, Andrew Brooks, Pat Byrnes, Dana Casey, Elisabeth Flessner, Julia Mitchner, Jenn Pearson, Peggy Shaffer, Amy Shimonkevitz, and John Tant.

Thanks too to my friends and colleagues Dr. Mark Komrad and Kim Komrad who graciously continue to teach me about Judaism and whose wise questions about Christianity continue to enhance my belief and corresponding practice.

And thanks to my wife Rebecca, teacher and scholar, whose honesty in constructive criticism makes this book much clearer and tighter than it would have been otherwise.

For any shortcomings in the book I am solely responsible.

Abbreviations

1 Cor First Corinthians

1 Kgs First Kings

1 Sam First Samuel

1 Thess First Thessalonians

2 Cor Second Corinthians

2 Kgs Second Kings

2 Sam Second Samuel

Exod Exodus

Ezek Ezekiel

Gal Galatians

Gen Genesis

Hos Hosea

Isa Isaiah

Jer Jeremiah

Josh Joshua

Judg Judges

Matt Matthew

NIV New International Version

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

Num Numbers

Prov Proverbs

Ps Psalms

Rev Revelation

Wis Wisdom

Introduction

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.

Job 19:25

¹³

They would have to sing better songs for me to learn to have faith in their Redeemer; and his disciples would have to look more redeemed!

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Even in the midst of Job’s trials, he was able to celebrate his relationship with God. Many a Christian martyr has faced death with optimism and good humor, celebrating their chance to make the ultimate statement of their faith.¹⁴ Most Christians have no greater trial than Job’s or the martyrs’ and therefore most Christians should have at least as much to celebrate. And what is celebration without humor? Friederich Nietzsche, who famously said God is dead, must have wondered the same things about Christians, noting how unredeemed congregations of Christians often look and act. If Christianity is telling the truth, who has more to celebrate, more to be happy about, than Christians? And again, what are celebration and happiness without humor? Without humor, they are too somber and their God is too somber.

This book calls out Christian teachings and practices that include humor on different levels and in different varieties. If we look for it, we will find humor in Scripture, in many Christian traditions, in personal and communal Christian experience, and in arguments for the presence of value of humor in religion generally and Christianity in particular. For example, in the Old Testament God laughs, sometimes in enjoyment, other times in mockery, but perhaps joyful mockery. The New Testament has Jesus frequently using irony, paradox, preposterousness, or banter to make his point. These are much more effective when humor accompanies them than when humor is absent. Indeed many biblical stories make the most sense only if we acknowledge certain humorous features within those stories. Two that stand out and that we will consider in more detail in Part III are the entire book of Jonah and the Parable of the Talents.

Many Christian traditions use humor in telling and trying to understand God’s truth and the truth of the human condition. There is the humor of joy, celebration, and relief. There is humor as means to describing the personalities of God and Jesus, and to explaining the precepts of the tradition. Sometimes the humor is aimed inward at the tradition and its adherents; sometimes the humor aims at people outside the tradition. Sometimes the humor is contentious or abusive; sometimes the humor is gentle.

The Christian experience ought to include a lot of humor, especially in the form of celebration and delight at the joy of the Gospel. Here again we may find humor of value for its own sake, or humor as a means to telling and understanding the truth.

And it stands to reason that if Christians are to make a joyful noise unto the Lord that they must do so in good humor, lest the noise be inauthentic.

To be sure, not everyone buys into this idea of humor in Christianity. Consider Chrysostom’s theology of tears, for example, over and against Karl-Josef Kuschel’s theology of laughter, both of which we will consider in this study. Less academically, any of us who have attended church have probably encountered, as Nietzsche may have, moments of solemnity, atonement, and cries about hell fire and damnation. Perhaps critics of Christianity give these moments even more weight in attacking a typical stereotype of puritanical Christians who refuse to have fun and who consign to hell anyone who does not accept their particular brand of Christianity.

But Christians are called to joy and celebration, which are tough tasks in the absence of humor. Thus, a complete study and practice of Christianity must include its humor—theologically and scripturally. This books aims at contributing to such a study by making a case for the value and presence of such humor, by identifying it, and by suggesting implications of the results.

This book argues that it is a mistake to worship a God who is too somber. It begins with the assumptions that being a Christian requires orthodoxy and orthopraxy and that these require proper devotion. The three main parts of the book assert the necessary conditions for proper devotion. Part One, A Call to Joy, examines humor in a religious context broadly. Chapter One lays out this context. Chapter Two works out the distinction between humor as a means to truth and humor as end in itself. Chapter Three works out the distinction between humor about religion and humor within religion.

Part Two, A Theology of Laughter, considers several arguments for and against humor in religion. Chapter Four offers a primer on logic in preparation for evaluation of arguments for and against the presence and value of humor in Christianity. Chapter Five examines specific arguments for the value and presence of humor in Christianity, and gathers these up in a discussion of a theology of laughter. Chapter Six examines specific arguments against the value and presence of humor in Christianity, and gathers these up in discussion of a theology of tears.

Part Three, The Bible as Comedy, explores humor in the Old and New Testaments. Chapter Seven offers an overview of humor in the Bible, including qualities of humor in the Bible, the Bible as comedy, a theology of laughter revisited, and Jesus’s use of humor as means to the truth. Chapter Eight explores humor in the Old Testament, including the Torah, the prophets, and the writings. Chapter Nine focuses on the Book of Jonah as a comedy. Chapter Ten explores humor in the New Testament, including the Gospels, Acts and the Letters, and Revelation. Chapter Eleven focuses on the Parable of the Talents as a humorous story.

Chapter Twelve offers a summary of our efforts and a suggestion for next steps.

13. All biblical quote are from the NRSV unless noted otherwise.

14. Thank you to John Tant for this insight.

Part I

A Call to Joy

The first proposition toward the argument against worshipping too somber a God is the call to joy. Acknowledging this call gives the opportunity to examine humor in a religious context broadly. We will do so across three chapters. Chapter 1 lays out this context. Chapter 2 distinguishes humor as a means to truth from humor as end in itself. Chapter 3 distinguishes humor about religion from humor within religion.

1

Call to Joy

Laying the Foundation

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.

—Proverbs 17:22

The call to joy is basic to Christianity. Adherents describe God as all-loving, all-good, able to conquer all evil, and in a valuable relationship with worshippers. To be sure, these same adherents may also refer to God as jealous, angry, and vengeful. But even in such characterization there is promise of a joyful relationship for those who are right with God. Thus, it seems inconsistent to worship God without expressing the joy that such worship entails. Hence the two epigraphs above.

If joy is imperative, then so is humor, for humorless joy is an oxymoron. And it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine a sense of humor unaccompanied by laughter, at least in the form of a gentle smile.

Therefore, given this book’s plan to talk about the place of humor in Christianity, a good start is the reminder of the call to joy. Since Conrad Hyers, in And God Created Laughter, offers a thoughtful and compelling argument for the centrality of joy in Christianity, this chapter focuses on his position.

Hyers seeks to identify the Bible as a comedy, rather than a tragedy. He builds his case on the Christian call to joy.¹ Let’s look at his case more closely, considering biblical evidence for this position, and getting clearer on what we mean by joy and its concomitants, including happiness, humor, laughter, play, and comedy.

The Gospel

In arguing that Christianity is about joy, Hyers develops three premises: The Gospels are, following William Tyndale, joyful tidings, and the rest of the New Testament builds on these tidings; Christ’s sacrifice gives us the freedom to laugh; and the Bible in its entirety is contained within comic parentheses.

Joyful Tidings

Regarding us the Gospels as joyful tidings, Hyers notes Acts 2, which describes the prevailing mood in the early church as joyful. Acts 2:12–15 includes a funny story within the story. The locals, hearing the Christians speaking in tongues, accuse them of having